Saturday, October 29, 2011

The fix.

Well, I was astounded to find out from my insurance company that Bones is actually worth nearly 10,000 dollars. Of course I neglected to mention the shabby interior, and missing canvas, but still, once I put some money into her, she'll be a real gem. They are not going to total her, and her front end damage is really only superficial. It's astounding, she runs wonderfully.

My great friend Aaron and his wife Jayme, have been so good to me. You really cannot find better friends in this world. I am indebted to you guys so much, I seriously love you guys like family.

Yesterday Aaron mentioned to me there is probably nice clean carpet under the aftermarket swamp green carpet, so I pulled up one of the trim pieces and found beautiful carpet. While Aaron let me heave and ho the seats out and rip out carpet he tore the front end apart and removed the busted AC Condenser. Everything beyond that looks like it's in good condition.

I ended up ripping the carpet out of the back of the camper, and the front.

Today once my body gets going I am going to head up and replace the previously damaged idle air valve, and do a bit of cleaning.

The plan is to have her into the body shop on Monday to have her door re-aligned, have the front core support cut out and replaced, and have her back in 2 or 3 days. At which point Aaron and I can put the front end back together, new hood, new driver side fender, new grilled, new bumper, and blinker and headlight assembly, also needs a new fan shroud upper.

Aaron might have a spare battery tray in his parts van, I can't remember, but he's going to give me the steel leafs from his parts van to replace Bones' old fiberglass ones. I'm going to replace her rear shocks and do an oil change, and Aaron is going to help me with the front shocks and sealing the leaking fuel hose.

We're also going to try and revive the dead coach battery so I can have heat.

My new personal plans for the interior are a factory hard top from Provan, which means I am probably head to South Carolina first.

Also a complete gutting of the interior. Provan used this wood laminated with papery crap. I'm going to rebuild everything inside with lightweight pine and luan plywood with a nice light brown stain. It should be a simple matter of pulling the pieces apart, tracing them on the new wood, and cutting them out, then glueing/re-assembling, and staining, the items to rebuild are the bench seating, kitchen areas, all 3 walls, the new drawer area, and the bathroom enclosure. This is a project for back in San Diego. I will also be rebuilding the bathroom that was removed, and replacing the l-shape of my bench seating with a drawer system/entertainment center. Other misc stuff I want to do is replace the blinds with accordion style RV blinds, and have the cushions and bed reupholstered a tan color to match the front carpet.

2 comments:

It has to be the Provan conversion cause I priced my 94 RWD CS 'W' VIN (best engine of that year) and it was only 2,000 in the shape it is in.

She is gonna be a real champ once I redo the interior, do some mechanical improvements, and get her painted. Somewhere down the line ihatemybike, AKA my buddy Aaron and I might convert her to AWD and V8.

The Dude

I was born in Connecticut where I was raised and lived until I was 22, at which point I moved to San Diego California for no reason in particular. Long ago I developed aspirations of a nomadic adventurous lifestyle which has only recently come to realization.
I am defined as granola eating hippie yet undefinable in many senses at the same time.
I garner my strength from Buddhist ideals and spirituality which I use as a compass to navigate through this plane of existence along with guidance from those much wiser than myself.